The invention relates to a removable protective shelter for an activity or leisure area.
At present, an increasing number of installations used for different types of activities or for leisure purposes must be protected in particular from poor weather conditions, at least on a temporary basis, in order to ensure that the outdoor activity or leisure nature of these activities is maintained. This is the case for example of swimming pools, play areas, terraces, greenhouses, entrances to stadiums or other.
Since the construction of a permanent cover cannot be easily considered because of the above-mentioned reasons, removable protective structures have been proposed in which no guiding structure on the ground is used in order to simplify the implementation of such structures.
In a first known arrangement, telescopic components are erected with no rails on the ground, a guide wheel being provided on each side of every component. This arrangement does not allow for the lateral tensile stresses that are applied during use and does not permit the shelter to be suitably positioned in order to be fixed to the ground.
A second known arrangement proposed the use of rigid rails as a connection between the various components. However, this system proved to be of little practical use because of the systematic jamming of one or more components during the tensile forces and/or pressure applied to open up the shelter or during uncoordinated handling. In addition, in this second embodiment, anchoring to the ground, ensured by means of bolts, is time-consuming and tedious and the inadequate seal between components does not provide the shelter with the necessary corresponding quality.
Finally, due to the required presence of two rigid rails on the ground, the application of this type of structure to the installation of shelters of the movable veranda type cannot be easily envisaged.
There is disclosed in FR-A-2,568,288 and FR-A-2,575,955 a telescopic protective shelter of the general type already described but in which each shelter element is connected to an adjacent shelter element by a single guiding device which includes a roller.
However, in operation such an arrangement has a tendency to jam when the shelter is being extended or contracted telescopically, due to the inadequacy of the aforementioned guiding arrangement.